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35 members of the 107th Airlift Wing will work
on building that will house Space Surveillance Network radar

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Thirty-five members of
the 107th Airlift Wing will spend three weeks in Australia this month helping
the Air Force Space Command install a Space Surveillance Network radar there.

The airmen belong to the
107th Civil Engineer Squadron. They are due to deploy to Australia later this
week.

The Citizen Airmen will
be working to renovate a building at the site and constructing a new antenna
support structure at H.E. Holt Naval Communications Station in the state of Western
Australia.

Air Force Space Command
and the Space and Missile Systems Center are working with the Air National
Guard to move more than 75 tons of Space Surveillance Network radar equipment
from Antigua to Western Australia.

The radar is being moved
to Australia, under a 2012 agreement between the two countries, in order to
allow for better tracking of space debris and inactive and active satellites
orbiting the southern hemisphere.

The radar is due to be
in place later this year. An Air National Guard team deployed to Antigua in
January to begin disassembling and packing the giant radar.

By having Air National
Guard engineers work on the project as part of their annual training, the Air
Force anticipates saving taxpayers about $20 million to $30 million.

The U.S. Space
Surveillance Network detects, tracks, catalogs and identifies artificial
objects orbiting Earth, ranging from active and inactive satellites and used
rockets to equipment dropped by accidents during a space walk.

The C-Band mechanical
tracking ground-based radar is useful in space surveillance and can identify
space objects in low Earth orbit. It can accurately track up to 200 objects a
day and can help to identify satellites, their orbits and potential anomalies,
according to a fact sheet about the system.

When the radar is
relocated to Australia, it will be the first low-Earth-orbit space surveillance
network sensor in the Southern Hemisphere. The new location will give needed
southern and eastern hemispheric coverage that will lead to better positional
accuracies and predictions, the fact sheet states.

The system will provide
a critical dedicated sensor for the main system the U.S. and its partners rely
on to detect, track and identify objects in space.

C-band radar also can
help in tracking high-interest space launches from Asia.

"This is an
excellent training opportunity for our Civil Engineer and it also allows our airmen
to put their skills to work to met national security objectives," said
Col. John Higgins, commander of the 107th Airlift Wing.

The 107th Airlift Wing
of the New York Air National Guard is based at Niagara Falls Air Reserve
Station. The wing is currently in the process of preparing to operate the
remotely piloted MQ-9 aircraft. The wing also provides trained airmen worldwide
in support of Air Force operations while providing personnel with specialized
skills to respond to emergencies within New York at the direction of the
governor.